Vs.

Here it is, the entire 12 page story of my sordid New York City rental history! This story, written with Alexis Sottile and edited by Dean Haspiel, first appeared as part of SMITH magazine's webcomics series, Next Door Neighbor in 2008. It was also my second Eisner award nomination for the digital comics category. I have very fond memories associated with this piece. As battered and bruised as I am in the story about neighbors and NYC apartments, I was as optimistic and naïve about the comics industry and publishing when I created this. This story coincides with a time where I met many of the folks that I now call friends and studiomates. Deep6 studios (Joan Reilly, Simon Fraser, Mike Cavallaro, Leland Purvis, Tim Hamilton and Dean Haspiel) opened their doors to me and allowed me to create much of the work that went into the comics I have on Act-i-vate and more. For that, I am eternally grateful because in the time I've spent working alongside them, I've learned so much about comics storytelling, art and writing. I would not be the creator I am (such as it is) without them.

The naiveté I associate with this time only hints at some of the ways I've since been buffeted about by the ups and downs of creating comics professionally. Don't expect any exposé any time soon but rest assured when I do it will cut to the bone and no doubt implicate myself as much as Vs. does. If I had to come up with a title now, it would be Gutter-Snipe!

As always, free content has one string attached; if you enjoyed what you read, please share it.

Radar Documentary: Next Door Neighbor

At long last the Radar Documentary dedicated to SMITH Magazine's webseries, Next Door Neighbor, is available for viral proliferation! And here it has infected my blog! Enjoy the show!

To embed this video, use the following code:

<div style="background:#000000;width:498px;height:423px"><embed flashVars="playerVars=showStats=no|autoPlay=yes|" src="http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/bg-3015272/radar_one_next_door_neighbor.swf" width="498" height="423" wmode="transparent" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" name="Metacafe_bg-3015272" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed><div style="font-size:12px;"><a href="http://www.metacafe.com/watch/bg-3015272/radar_one_next_door_neighbor/">Radar One - Next Door Neighbor</a> - <a href="http://www.metacafe.com/">For more amazing video clips, click here</a></div></div>

Publishers Weekly Talks Webcomics with SMITH Magazine!

“Smith is known for high quality work and for getting the work published,” said Smith literary agent ICM's Kate Lee, “and publishers that do graphics know this.” Shooting War, the first webcomic published on Smith, was published by Grand Central Publishing in November 2007 and A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld will be released by Pantheon on August 18th. Current projects being serialized on Smith are Next Door Neighbor, an anthology of next-door neighbor stories edited by Dean Haspiel, and Graphic Therapy, an autobiographical graphic series by Emily Steinberg.

Publishers Weekly posted an interesting piece about webcomics this week. In it they talk about the many ways SMITH Magazine has used webcomics to tell unique personal stories. SMITH magazine success stories, Shooting War and A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge provide context for the site's current projects including Next Door Neighbor. They even acknowledge Alexis Sottile's and my recent Eisner nomination for Vs. Click here to read the article.

SMITH Magazine Honors Vs.

SMITH Magazine, the home for the Next Door Neighbor webcomix series has posted a notice about the recent Eisner nomination. Jeff Newelt, SMITH Magazine Comics Editor, had this to say,

Eisner Nomination for Next-Door Neighbor’s “Vs.”

SMITH Magazine congratulates Joe Infurnari and Alexis Sottile on their Eisner nomination (think Academy Awards for comics) for Best Digital Comic for “Vs.,” their virtuoso contribution to Next-Door Neighbor, SMITH’s truelife webcomic anthology, edited by Dean Haspiel. “Vs.” is the tale of Joe’s nightmarish neighborly encounters, one after another after another after another. Told as an autobiographical monologue written in verse, juxtaposed with rabid remembrances, dizzyingly visualized like a sickedelic melange of EC horror comics, The Twilight Zone, and Universal’s Monster Movies meets Cronenberg and Lynch, “Vs.” has got to be seen to be believed (and you can believe it, because it all happened). (more…)

The above image is my annotation for the page at the top of this post. Now you can read a fully annotated version of Vs. at Act-i-vate.com! If you've read it at SMITH, now read it with all the supplemental information! It's like having the dvd extras for every page! Read my comments for fun factoids and real life anecdotes behind my neighborly misadventures retold in Vs.

If you like Vs. enough, please consider voting for it for the Best Digital Comic Eisner award. You can do so here:

www.eisnervote.com

Thanks so much for your vote, support and readership!

Radar Episode One: Next Door Neighbor

As some of you may remember, I had the good fortune of having a story included in the Next Door Neighbor series of webcomics at SMITH magazine. Well, the good folks at Radar did a small, 3 minute documentary about Next Door Neighbor and the whole comics scene happening at Deep6 and XOXOs. Yours truly played the crazy and for my efforts, I get a little love from the camera. Click the link above to watch the episode.

Many thanks to Alex, Lance and the rest of the crew at www.radar.workbookproject.com for their hard work and talent in putting together this piece that makes all of us look so good.

Next-Door Neighbor Story Monday!

This Monday December 8th, I'll have a story up at Smith Magazine as part of their online anthology of Next-Door Neighbor Stories edited by Dean Haspiel. Titled, Vs, this story was written by Alexis Sottile and I back in the day and it is a harrowing tale of my cryptozoological New York rental history! See! My terrible run-ins with vociferous fowls! Frankensteinian pooches! Tentacled jam bands! Drunken cro-magnons! Pill-pushing werewolves and many many more! IT'S ALL 100% TRUE MEMOIR COMICS AT THEIR FINEST! See you there!